“Well, I do have four brothers. We used to be so close…” she began, then stopped to pull herself together. “My mother took off when I was only three. I guess she’d had enough of being with us. I never knew her. My oldest brothers have vague memories, but I have nothing, not even a memory of her smile from back then. I was so little. There are pictures, of course, but I never look at them. She betrayed me, betrayed us all. It was even worse because when I was growing up, all my friends had moms. I didn’t understand why I didn’t.”
She choked up for a moment. Colt didn’t say a word, just found himself holding her close to his chest while he ran his fingers through her hair.
“I miss them, you know.”
“Miss who?”
“My brothers, even my dad. I never say that out loud, never admit to anyone that I miss them, that I need them. If I admit it, then I hurt, and I’ve hurt enough already to last me a lifetime. Before this last year I hadn’t shed a single tear since I was thirteen years old.”
“Not one tear? Not even when you got hurt?”
“Nope. Not a single tear.”
“What was so significant when you were thirteen?”
She was silent for so long that Colt knew that whatever she was going to say would make a difference. He just didn’t know which of them it would actually change.
“That was when I found my mom.”
Colt sat there and waited. Something traumatic must have happened to make her feel the need to become so determined to hide who she really was. The air around them was so thick, it felt like an actual weight on his shoulders.
She started to squirm in his arms. “You don’t really want to hear this, Colt.”
He continued caressing her hair as he said, “I really do, Brielle. Open up to me. It will help.”
“But I don’t even know you.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone you don’t know, because there isn’t that fear of being judged the rest of your life.”
“I found out that my mother was living in South Carolina, and I had a friend who was vacationing in the same town on the coast where my mother lived. Dad didn’t know, so when they asked if I could vacation with them, he let me go. It was summertime, and I stalled for almost the entire week before showing up at her door.”
Again she paused as a sob stopped her. But she managed to swallow the tears. “She lived in this nice neighborhood. Nothing like where I lived with my father, but a nice two-story house with flowerpots on the front porch. It’s funny the things I remember, but I clearly recall those blue ceramic pots with purple flowers in them. I gazed at them for what had to be five minutes before I worked up the courage to ring the doorbell.”
“Was she home?”
“Yes. She opened the door, and I was amazed. She was so beautiful. We have the same color hair, and the same eyes. It was almost surreal looking at her in the open door. She had a friendly smile on her face as she asked how she could help me. I remember my heart thumping so hard I couldn’t even breathe. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess I was hoping she would recognize me immediately. I mean, I am her daughter, but it had been ten years since she’d seen me, and it wasn’t as if she’d been home all that much those three years right after my birth. Or at least that’s what my brothers said.”
Brielle was rambling, but Colt didn’t try to stop her. He knew this wasn’t easy. He began kneading the tense muscles in her shoulders.
“I told her who I was and her smile faded — it was almost in slow motion. She looked around behind me as if worried someone was watching, and then ushered me into the house. I was so happy that she invited me in. I didn’t even think about the fact that her smile had disappeared.
“We walked into the living room, and I’ll never forget that moment, because there was a gas fireplace against the wall, and a few framed photos sat above it. They weren’t of my brothers and me, but of her with another man and two little girls, girls with the same color hair as me…”
This time when she tried to push down the sob ripping through her, it didn’t work. A deep grimace of pain contorted her beautiful face as she fought against the truth of the memory.
“You can stop, Brielle. You don’t have to go down this road…”
“No. I need to finish… I asked her who they were. She told me they were her children. I’ll never forget the ache in my chest at her words. I turned and asked her about me, about my brothers. She said…” She stopped again.
This time, Colt didn’t interrupt.
“She said that we were strangers to her, that she had never wanted us, and had only produced us to please my father. She was so cold as she spoke to me, looking right through me. I begged her to stop, to quit saying what she was saying, but she just looked right through me, and in a cold voice she told me that I was in the real world, and I’d better grow up, that she’d married for money, but money eventually hadn’t been worth the misery she’d been forced to endure, that she had never loved my father, and therefore she couldn’t possibly love any children he’d helped to create. She told me never to come back or seek her out again. That her new family knew nothing about us and she wanted to keep it that way. Then she ushered me out the front door and didn’t even give me a chance to turn around and look at her one last time before I heard the door shut behind me. I walked away in a fog. I didn’t want my friend or her parents to see me like that, so I sat on the beach for hours. So many tears...
“When the last tear fell, I stood up, walked out to the ocean water and scrubbed my face with it, burning my eyes and nose. I didn’t care. I looked out at the sunset and vowed then and there that I would never shed another tear, that no one would ever have that much control over my emotions. I changed that summer. When I went back home, I saw my dad in a different light, and my brothers. I think I blamed them all for her leaving. I didn’t want to blame myself, but I did that, too. Though she said it was our father she hated, I was thirteen. At that age the world revolves around you, so I came to the conclusion that it was me who’d made her run away. I never told my brothers or my dad about the visit. It was my own private hell to deal with.”
Brielle fell silent again. Just as she had that summer day, she forced the tears back and retreated inside her head.
“Don’t do that, Brielle. Don’t let a woman like that have so much power over you. She’s the one who was wrong. She’s the one who missed out on your life and the lives of your brothers. You did nothing wrong. How could a three-year-old do anything wrong? Anyway, no child could ever chase a parent away. It was her choice, so don’t continue to let her shape your life.” Colt turned her head so she was forced to look into his eyes.